


Suits You Fine

by VioletSmith



Series: Suits You Fine [1]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Boys in Skirts, Crossdressing, Fishnets, M/M, Nail Polish, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22456912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletSmith/pseuds/VioletSmith
Summary: I headcanon these boys as having a very close, queerplatonic relationship.I also imagine Dirk wearing clothing that's often considered women's clothing. Dirk just thinks of it as clothes, and wears what he wants to wear. Todd maybe takes a bit more time to process.This is just a little bit of fic exploring these ideas, with some nail polish thrown in for good measure.
Relationships: Todd Brotzman & Dirk Gently, Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
Series: Suits You Fine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616671
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	Suits You Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blewoutthestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blewoutthestars/gifts).



“You’re doing it again.”

“No I’m not,” Todd protests instinctively. And then: “Doing what?”

“Worrying about what society thinks.”

Todd blinks. “Well one of us has to.”

“Society and I have nothing to do with each other,” Dirk declares. “We never have. I don’t understand her, she doesn’t understand me.”

“Society is female?”

“How should I know?”

Todd feels deeply confused, but he’s been around Dirk for so long now that the feeling is familiar, almost comfortable, and he’s learned to lean into it. Let it settle around him like warm water.

“The point is, you don’t need to worry about what anyone’s thinking Out There.” Dirk gestures, and his gesture seemingly takes in the entire world beyond the small bubble of the two of them, this room, the living room of what Todd had once considered his house. Dirk has been staying with him for such a long time that Todd’s pretty sure “staying with” can be replaced by “living with” at this point.

“I don’t worry about what people think.”

Dirk scoffs affectionately. It’s a very Dirk sound.

“Okay, sometimes I worry. But I don’t act on it as much as I used to.” It’s true. Todd knows how it looks that Dirk stays with (lives with) him in a one bedroom apartment and they spend all their time together and even people who know them pretty well think that there’s something not-platonic going on between them, and he’s reached a point where he’s just sort of made peace with it. Nobody really understands any part of their lives, their work, and nobody needs to. It’s enough that he and Dirk know. And the same goes for their relationship.

They sleep in the same room. They eat the same food. They do their laundry together. Once, when they were walking down the street on a too-hot day, they held hands. Todd can’t even remember who started it, whose fingers brushed against whose and which of them decided just to not let go. They’re friends. Who hold hands some times. Alright, maybe friend isn’t quite the word, but then there doesn’t really seem to BE a word for what they are. And maybe that’s okay too. The world is a bigger and stranger place than Todd knew for most of his life, and he’s learning to roll with what the universe sends him.

Only, today it’s sending him Dirk in a pair of fishnet tights.

He’s still got his yellow jacket on, zipped up over a cardigan and what appears to be a very small pair of black shorts, and these. Tights.

“You’re doing it again,” Dirk says, helpfully and rather cheerfully. “I can see the panic in your eyes.”

“I’m not panicking!” Todd insists. “I, uh… I’m just wondering, if there’s a reason. For, uh. The.” He waves a hand in the direction of Dirk’s legs.

Dirk frowns, the picture of innocent puzzlement, and glances down at his own legs. “Oh! Yes, well of course. I’m not going out like this.”

Todd feels his shoulders start to relax, like he hadn’t realised how stiffly he was holding them. “Okay,” he says, with some relief.

“Give me a moment” says Dirk, and he disappears into the bedroom only to re-emerge moments later still wearing the stockings, only now with the addition of a tall pair of black platform heels.

Todd makes a noise that is not a word.

“Better, right?”

Todd is still making the noise. Dirk doesn’t seem to notice. He smiles broadly and opens the front door.

“Come along, Todd, we don’t have all day.”

*

It’s just another thing Dirk does. And he didn’t do it when they first met and started working together, not so much, and Todd thinks that could have been a deliberate thing to try not to scare him off, or it could just be a Dirk thing. Who can say. Dirk is as inscrutable as the universe itself. But he starts to do it more frequently. Not all the time, just often enough that Todd stops reacting quite so much.

“Dirk,” he says carefully one day, when Dirk comes out of the bathroom in a pleated, dark blue skirt and a dove grey, fitted cardigan with a white collar and red embroidery down the front.

“Todd,” Dirk replies happily.

“Are you a woman?” He’s not sure if that’s the best way to ask, or if he even should be asking, but it’s _Dirk_ and it feels weird that there are things Todd doesn’t know about him.

Dirk frowns. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Because...” Todd knows he’s about to say this all wrong. “You keep wearing women’s clothes.”

Dirk looks down at himself incredulously. “No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t. These are my clothes. And I’m not a woman. Therefore, by definition, they are not women’s clothes.”

“Right. I guess… that makes sense?”

“Good.” Dirk seems relieved. “Glad we cleared that up.”

Todd doesn’t say anything. But inside, a voice in his head is saying: _You can DO that??_

Could anyone do it?

Could Todd?

*

By the time he gets back to the apartment his arms are sore from the weight of the groceries. There’s more to carry than there used to be when he lived alone. He sets the bags down gratefully on the kitchen counter, then calls Dirk to come help him put the stuff away.

“Oh, I can’t right now,” Dirk replies, appearing as if from nowhere into the kitchen.

“Why not?”

Dirk waves his hands in front of Todd’s face. The nails – short, neat, familiar – are a wet, electric blue.

“They aren’t dry yet.”

Todd feels his face go through a complicated array of expressions. He opens his mouth. “Oh. Okay then.”

He puts the groceries away himself. Dirk keeps up a stream of his usual bizarre conversational chatter, occasionally pausing to blow on his fingernails.

Todd drops a tin of peaches onto his own foot.

“Damn it.”

“Todd! Are you okay?”

And Todd really means to say that he’s fine, but instead what comes out is: “Could you do that to my nails too?”

And that’s how he finds himself, on a slow Sunday afternoon with the sun’s low rays coming in slant through the open window, sat on his sofa with his fingers spread on Dirk’s knee while Dirk paints the same electric blue onto Todd’s fingernails.

Todd likes it. He tries to let go of the worry about whether he should like it, and just go with it. That’s what Dirk would do, he thinks. Fuck it, the world doesn’t understand them, society doesn’t understand, they’re allowed to be whatever they want to be. Friends who hold hands. Lovers who don’t fuck. Something with no name or label. Whatever it is when you know someone so well and so thoroughly that knowing them becomes its own kind of intimacy.

Todd likes the feeling of Dirk’s thigh under his hand, and he likes the butterfly-light touch of Dirk’s fingers, the slow cold strokes of the brush, the dizzying colour. He likes being the focus of Dirk’s full attention, likes being able to observe him like this without being observed back because all of Dirk’s concentration is on his fingertips.

It feels like being able to breathe properly.

*

It becomes a thing that they do. Not always. Just sometimes. Todd will open his eyes in the morning to see Dirk already awake and staring at him from the twin bed against the other wall, as he often is, and Todd will stretch a little and smile, and say “maybe that orange one today.”

“Coral,” Dirk will correct him. But he’ll take out the little sponge bag full of bottles and rifle through it until he’s got the one Todd wants. He’ll climb into Todd’s bed bare footed and all impossible angles and lines, barely enough room for the both of them, and he’ll take Todd’s hand and lay it flat on the mattress, fingers starfished. “I think it suits you.”

“Yeah,” Todd breathes. “I think it suits me fine.”


End file.
